In my home decorating, like in many other areas of my life, I guess I am a bit of a slacker. Since two of my good friends have recently been going through the process of building big, beautiful new homes, I have been taking a look at mine, and seeing lots of room for improvement. I was getting a bit of a case of nice, big, fancy, new home envy, but in reality I know that I would be truly stressed with a huge mortgage and expensive white cabinets that my dirty fingered family members would ruin before I had paid for.
So, the best I can do at the moment is make do with what I have, and try to spruce up this old place. I favor painting as an easy place to start. It's low cost- especially since I just mixed up a bunch of new colors out of old paint we had laying around the garage. You'd probably be surprised at the fun and interesting colors I came up with. And, I am keeping all of that old paint out of the toxic waste pile.
I love that painting is quick- especially since I tend to skip much of the prep work. Yeah, yeah, I know the prep work is the most important part of a good paint job- or so I've heard from people who have really nice paint jobs, but I just don't have the patience for that at this point in my life. I'm not a detail oriented kinda gal, and I really have no desire to sand, tape and whatever else I'm supposed to do for weeks before I can even get get started on painting. I want to see some change now. I figure if I get off the big flakes of old paint and the largest cobwebs, and paint over the rest of the stuff- it can just be part of my artsy texturing effect. Although several spiders homes were painted over as a part of eminent domain, they were all relocated to a nearby oak tree, and to my knowledge none were hurt or killed during this project.
I do like to do different colors on each wall, and unfortunately if you look closely at all, this shows that corners are not my specialty. But, it doesn't really matter if it's a perfect job. Who's going to be staring at my corners anyway? And who cares if it doesn't last for 10 years? I'll be ready for new colors at some point and paint again, or maybe by that time, this home will be being demolished for parts and we will be building our new house.
For right now, it's really nice to see progress in an afternoon- a purple back door, some red, orange and yellow cabinets in the kitchen, and a teal wall in the laundry room. I may look at my paint job in a week and wonder what I was thinking, but at the moment, I am really liking the effect of adding instant color to my life.
I have also taken to matting and framing kids' artwork, and hanging it all over. They are so proud when guests comment, and I think the art gallery effect really jazzes the place up.
